Inmate to be executed in Nueces County

Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez has been put to death for killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase more than six years ago.

The ruling notwithstanding, lawyers appealed the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which ordered in April “that no further pleadings will be accepted from counsel absent leave of court supported by Lopez’s election to proceed through such counsel”. It’s the first of two executions scheduled this week in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state. Dow also argued the March 2009 crime was not a capital murder because Lopez didn’t intend to kill Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander. The 20-year veteran was laying out spike strips on a freeway exit ramp in an attempt to stop Alexander, who was fleeing from police in an SUV.

Lopez later said he tried to flee because he thought there was a warrant out for his arrest for parole violations.

Even after the chase ended, Lopez continued to use the SUV as a battering ram, aiming it at officers and vehicles before he was shot in the arm, neck and upper chest and then subdued, authorities said.

Now the supreme court has made it’s decision. Authorities say Lopez was driving around 60 miles per hour. I hope this execution helps my family and also the victim’s family. Lopez’s five years on Texas’ death row in Livingston is shorter than the average 10 years inmates wait while appealing. Texas has scheduled back-to-back executions Wednesday and Thursday for Lopez and Tracy Lane Beatty. He had previously pleaded guilty to indecency with a child and was a registered sex offender.

A spokesman for the TDCJ told the newspaper that Lopez’s organs would not be viable after his execution because the single dose of pentobarbital used for lethal injection effectively poisons the organs.

Testimony at his trial showed he had at least five children by three women, and a sixth was born while he was jailed for Alexander’s death.